In the past several years, there has been a trend of smart fitness trackers that can be used by athletes, trainers and fitness enthusiast. Examples of these devices are Nike+ FuelBand, Fitbit Flex and Up by Jawbone. These devices all monitor your physical activities and track them through software that displays analysis and progress.
A new fitness tracker, which is built into a shirt/tank-top called Hexoskin, has made its debut into the market. Hexoskin is at $86,923 of its $100,00 funding goal on Indiegogo–an international crowd-funding site, where anyone can raise money for film, music, art, charity, gaming, theater and more.
The advantage of using a shirt instead of a traditional fitness tracker is there is no armband. It offers a larger coverage area on your body to monitor and it provides much more information and analysis with the use of all its sensors, providing you with increased feedback.
All the sensors in Hexoskin are built into the shirt/tank-top’s fabric in such a way that it provides maximum comfort. These sensors monitor heart rate, steps, speed, breathing, sleep patterns, respiratory rate (RR) intervals and much more. With all this technology built into the shirt, you would think that washing it would be impossible and it would start to smell after awhile. However, that is not the case with Hexoskin, being that it’s machine washable in cold water, and it must be hung up to dry rather than putting it in the dryer.
The shirt ‘s multiple sensors transfer the data to a small storage device kept in a pocket of the shirt. This device offers more than 150 hours of data recording. The Hexoskin data recorder can pair via Bluetooth with Android and iOS devices. This feature gives you instant access to all your fitness data.
The fitness and training information can be transferred to a computer with the use of USB.
Another useful Hexoskin feature is its ability to sync multiple shirts to one device, opening the opportunity for trainers or coaches to monitor groups of people as they train together.
The Hexoskin opens the market to new and smarter fitness trackers, with the use of better sensors, smarter monitoring and more analysis of health data. This technology is perfect for athletes of all kinds and provides the opportunity for individual and group training. The Hexoskin is still in the funding stage with several options for funding the project, including $39 up to $10,999 depending on which package you choose and how much you want to spend. The estimated delivery of the product after funding is complete is January 2014. If you are serious about your fitness, check out the available packages, and those who help with funding will receive discounts.
Marcus Seegers may be reached at [email protected].
